Does instant transportation effect game immersion?

[Griss]

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but if you want immersion, I would strongly recommend playing this game called Real Life. It's pretty intense.

That game sucks, Its totally unbalanced, buggy and the developers has absolutely no idea how to communicate with the player base or take feedback.

[Seif]

That game sucks, Its totally unbalanced, buggy and the developers has absolutely no idea how to communicate with the player base or take feedback.

Real life has way too much grinding and the level design is just awful. Well at least I can use an AH and have proper player housing...

[Eekiki]

Real life has way too much grinding and the level design is just awful. Well at least I can use an AH and have proper player housing...

Yeah, but Chinese RMT bots have ruined the economy, and we still don't have a reraise spell.

[Nikita]

Apparently it's only immersive if everyone suffers.

However, immersion is broken all the time in the game. If you can't accept teleportation as legitimate, then you can't accept weightless inventories and currency supplies; you can't accept getting chomped, burned, slashed, pierced, and bludgeoned by your foes with no permanent scars and no visible marks. When people die, they should stay dead. People shouldn't suddenly wear their armor poorly just because they picked up a wand when they normally use a sword. People shouldn't get smarter because they put on a hat of smartness or stronger because they put on a belt of strength.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but if you want immersion, I would strongly recommend playing this game called Real Life. It's pretty intense.

Hmmmm, thanks for finding the words to describe the sheer ignorance in all of these threads. "Immersion" is really subjective, what breaks immersion varies from player to player. However, other players should not have to suffer just for your own sense of immersion.

I wish I could use your entire post as a quote for my signature, but it is simply too large and I love every word you wrote too much to leave anything out. :P

[Tempestmoon]

Apparently it's only immersive if everyone suffers.

However, immersion is broken all the time in the game. If you can't accept teleportation as legitimate, then you can't accept weightless inventories and currency supplies; you can't accept getting chomped, burned, slashed, pierced, and bludgeoned by your foes with no permanent scars and no visible marks. When people die, they should stay dead. People shouldn't suddenly wear their armor poorly just because they picked up a wand when they normally use a sword. People shouldn't get smarter because they put on a hat of smartness or stronger because they put on a belt of strength.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but if you want immersion, I would strongly recommend playing this game called Real Life. It's pretty intense.

Immersion does not equal realistic, You want REAL immersion, play the real world. Everyone here that that talks about Immersion wants it in a fantasy world, not the real one. Things don't don't have to be possible to be immersive.

[Rau]

oh cool, another thread about this.

[Gramul]

To hell with immersion!

[Commat]

No.
<('.')>

[Azurymber]

I would argue that realism and immersion are different. Immersion makes you feel like you are playing in a dynamic world with many different things going on around you. So when you are able to quick-warp everywhere that turns a massive world into more of a series of small levels or small areas.

For example FFXI was a -VERY- immersive world. And a lot of people really loved the journey from outside jeuno to the 3 main cities in the WoTG expansion because you just couldn't port there. It kind of forced you to explore and discover the world. And the quests didn't just take you to spots 3 min away from the campaign locations. often you had to run through an entire area to get to them. (using this as an example to show that even end-game stuff made the world immersive) You had to run to sky through 2 awesome zones. You had to run through tons of dangeroud stuff in sea to get to certain areas. It wasnt just -port to leve, run 3 secs past weak mobs-

Same thing with the way the world was designed. It was difficult to get from city to city untill you had spent a good week or so in starter areas (but possible if you really wanted to). Getting to kazahm and that area required a fairly long quest that forced you to explore the early "dungeons". Missions made you go through the beastmen forts as opposed to ffxiv where you walk outside the city or port to a leve and walk for all of 2 minutes.

The point im trying to make is that ffxiv doesn't make you explore or experience the world in any way other than small areas around leves. There is no sense of danger, there is no sense of journey or vastness, and there is no sense of a massive immersive world. You can literally just appear anywhere you want and then reappear back in town. Doesn't that kind of ruin the concept of an MMO?

[lackofwords]

The novelty of traveling on an airship such as the one in FFXI was enjoyable the first dozen rides. Afterwards, I've become jaded to the experience and usually went AFK while riding an airship or ferry. Same concept applied here in FFXIV's ferry.

As for teleport, it is true if you're only focusing on doing leves, which has been trimmed down over time to cater to mostly causal solo players. Taking that target group into consideration, those players usually do not want to 'stop and smell the roses'. If you're heading off to a grind party, usually you have to run on a foot a bit to the target location as you do when you teleport in FFXI. (E.G. Puks and Skeletons at Nanawa Mines)

In short, exploration is nice the first time, such as running between the three city-states the first time. However, it's not exploration anymore if you've seen the area once already. It becomes a daily routine if you are covering the same terrain again. (E.G. running between Ul'dah to Nanawa Mines) I feel no more immersed in the world traveling the same terrain multiple times.